Within two years, the Egger Group decided several times to purchase a conical conEX NG 65 twin screw extruder from battenfeld-cincinnati Austria GmbH, Vienna. All extruders were installed in the edge strip plant Egger Dekor A.S. in Gebze, Turkey. A first for both companies: Egger is a new customer and now operates its first extruders from Vienna, and for battenfeld-cincinnati it is the first time that a customer processes ABS on a New Generation extruder.
The family-run Egger Group, headquartered in St. Johann in Tyrol, is one of the world's leading wood processing companies with a group turnover of 2.8 billion euros and 9,600 employees. The former Roma Plastik SAN located in Gebze has been a member of the group since 2010 and has been trading as Egger Dekor A.S. since the middle of last year. Egger ranks among the world's leading manufacturers of edge strips, primarily for the furniture industry. In Turkey, around 900 employees produce edge strips made of ABS and PVC on a total of some 80 extrusion lines. "In addition to the two main materials ABS and PVC, which we process in roughly equal quantities, we make a small contingent of special strips made of PMMA," explains the company’s Technical Plant Manager Ender Celebi. "Our edge strips are sold in some 70 countries worldwide." While ABS strips are more in demand in Western and Central Europe, PVC strips are common in Eastern Europe and North America.
When choosing the new extruders, it was very important for the plastics processor that all raw materials could be processed on the same extrusion lines. "Together with the customer, we processed several compounds at our technical lab in Vienna, were thus able to convince him of our new conical extruders’ excellent performance and won the contract for the first machine," reports battenfeld-cincinnati Austria’s CTO Dr. André Wieczorek.
In 2017, the extruder specialist installed the first conEX NG 65 in Turkey. Some existing components designed by the customer were connected to the extruder there to form a complete line. "In practice, we were so pleased with the extruder’s performance that we ordered several more identical models," is how Ender Celebi praises his new machine supplier.
Dr. Wieczorek is sure that: "A great advantage of our new generation of conical extruders is their long service life." conEX NG extruders have been on the market for about three years. They are based on the proven Konos and conEX series, but achieve significantly higher outputs with enormous flexibility thanks to a complete process overhaul. A long preheating zone and an optimized screw design ensure a balanced ratio of mechanical and thermal energy input, so that not only different materials can be processed, but also high tool pressures of up to 520 bar can be applied.
"Finally, the extruders of the new generation also score with their small footprint, low energy consumption and modest investment costs in relation to their high performance," concludes Dr. Wieczorek. The extruders are available in the three sizes of 42, 54 and 65 mm. For profile applications, they can reach outputs ranging from 35 to 250 kg/h, and for pipe applications from 50 to 450 kg/h.
